'The whole dozy idea for the show has been underpinned by a nice, chatty apologia for colonialism' ... Victoria's Empire. Photograph: BBC1

It's like being in a John Wyndham novel. You go to sleep and everybody's normal, you wake up and the nation's celebrities are in the grip of the most consuming self-love. Oh, the Kraken of Victoria Wood's ego! I never even knew it existed, and there it is, fresh from the bottom of the sea, all soggy!

Let's recap - she is going round the world looking for other places named Victoria for Victoria's Empire (Sunday, BBC1). It's a bit like The Pilot Show on E4, where they suggested to Dean Gaffney that he build a replica Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Northampton, and it would be called The Leaning Tower of Gaffney. Except, hang on a tick, that was a joke.

Today, we find ourselves in Jamaica, Newfoundland and Ghana. The whole dozy idea has been retrospectively underpinned by a nice, chatty, down-to-earth apologia for colonialism; Vix capers about in a tank top, being told about the horrors of slavery. "We certainly didn't start the industry, but we capitalised on it," she clarifies, in case anyone mistakes her for a breast-beating southern softie.

I do not understand what purpose was meant to be served by this programme. It was too "educational" to be an enjoyable travelogue, but it stopped short of transmitting any actual information. It was like that moment at the end of term when you arrive for biology and all the blinds are down, and you think, "Cool! We're gonna watch a video!", and then it turns out to be so grindingly well-meaning and without vim that you'd actually rather have spent the time talking turkey and trying to get a condom on a test tube. Talking of biology, I notice that my tolerance for Victoria Wood's hearty self-deprecation waxes and wanes with my blood-sugar levels. It would be interesting to listen to her saying, "Ooh, I'm a bit sweaty" and "Oh, I don't know if I fancy a maize dumpling" before and after a Snickers, and monitor my response. Though, I admit, only interesting for me.

If it was hard to squint out the point of Victoria's Empire, it was nowhere near as plain irksome as Stefan Gates and his Cooking in the Danger Zone (Sunday, BBC2). First he hangs out with Inuits in the Arctic, where the food is minging, or else it's been flown in and costs a fiver for an apple. "One person's moral objection is another's Sunday dinner," Gates pontificates. Oh my, in a tradition reaching down from Seneca, how he distils mankind's mental torment. Seals are cute! And yet, sometimes, some hungry people eat them!

He goes on a seal-hunting trip, "which obviously won't go down very well with my wife. Or Greenpeace. Or most people, really". This is just tripe. Metaphorically, I mean (only a fool would object to real tripe). OK, so maybe some people wouldn't eat seals because they are cute, but they would eat a chicken because they're a bit beaky. Them ain't morals. Greenpeace never made a campaigning issue out of snowbound subsistence hunters snagging the odd meat source. Sure, it's unpleasant to watch a seal get shot, but it's not nice to see a cow in an abattoir.

Soon after the seal gets its landing papers, disaster strikes. The ice closes in. They only have a tiny gap to squeeze their tug through, otherwise they'll never see home again, or at the very least, they'll have to ask the cameraman to give them a hand. But the narrative pacing is all wrong: disaster would have been much more impactful, I think, had it struck before we realised what a total tool this man was.

Off he goes to Korea. "Their love of extraordinary foods is almost comical," he says. Is it really that hilarious that, in some parts of the world, where the climate and the physiological profile are different from here, they might choose different sources of protein? Is that what counts for hilarity on today's BBC2? Next they'll give him a programme where he goes round France, noting that, "What we would call 'gibberish' is actually their version of language. It's hilarious to hear them say 'oui' meaning 'yes'!"

The culturally specific biscuit, however, is taken by Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who have talking-heads-ed their way into a full programme (Lucas and Walliams's Perfect Night In, Channel 4) in which they sit on a sofa talking about bits of telly they've known and loved. Ooh, Are You Being Served! Wasn't it droll? Oh my sides! Scouts on a rollercoaster, eating their lunch! (This was actually quite funny). A lot of their favourite telly, it might amaze you to hear, they've already ripped off for Little Britain, so this is not the first time they've sat on a couch, having this conversation. But this time they're doing it for our benefit, to save us having to go down the pub and have our own meandering conversations. It's so much more time-economical, I'm actually going to cull my friends. I wonder if an Inuit would like them, for blubber.